Archives for February 2014

Paper Dot Garland

February 25, 2014 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

When we started planning the shower for my brother and his fiancee, I went where I always go for inspiration… PINTEREST!! I had been seeing these cute paper dot garlands around the web and thought they would be perfect for the shower! (the picture below was my inspiration, but whoever pinned it originally didn’t put a link the original site… after some googling you can go here if you want to see the rest of that party)

So although this was about the complete opposite of our color scheme, this was our inspiration pic! But of course I had never made a paper garland before, but it looked like they were just sewn on a sewing machine… so I gave it the old college try! And you better believe you will see more of these at my parties!! IT WAS SOOOOO EASY (and quick and cheap… can’t beat that!).

I bought this guy at Joann’s with a 40% off coupon (seriously if you ever shop at there or Hobby Lobby, download their apps for coupons, they ALWAYS have a 40% off or more coupon!). I think it cost me about $9.

I also bought 6 sheets of cardstock paper (and I swear those two gold sheets are the same, but they look very different here!):

And then I had a date with my couch and Modern Family, so I cut out all my dots

I made them as close to each other as possible, going around the edge of the paper, then cut off the scraps and kept going on the inner square. And about one episode later (don’t you love projects you can measure in episodes watched??) I had this:

Now the really complicated part (here is where I need a sarcasm font): lay them out in the order you want

And feed them through your sewing machine one by one. I had my foot pushed down about medium speed and would just wait until the dot before it was just past the needle and would stick the second dot in, that left about an 1/16th of an inch in between each dot. But since my coordination skills leave a bit to be desired, some have wider spaces than others. And ladies and gentlemen, we call that character.

The only other note I have is to leave some extra string at the beginning and end so that you will have something to hang them from.

And there my friends you have awesome color coordinated decorations for less that $5. (not counting the dot puncher since by the time I’m done making these for every party from now on the cost per garland will be negligible!) But that’s enough finance talk… lets take a look at the final product shall we!?

And because I had a few extra gold ones I added them as a garland for the cheesecake

Filed Under: DIY, Party, Showers, Uncategorized

Wedding Shower!!!

February 24, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

Y’all… I had the BEST weekend. My twin brother is marrying one of my favorite people in the whole world next weekend, and this last weekend I had the privilege of hosting a couples shower for them! I am so excited for them to be married and I LOVED getting to participate in throwing them a shower! We knew their guest list was pretty extensive for this shower since it was for quite a few of the people at our church that have helped shape Arthur into the pastor that he is now. Since we knew that, our senior pastor and his wife offered to open up their house for us to throw the shower in! It was a perfect location and the weather was beautiful (being the humble person I am… I’m totally taking credit for the GORGEOUS weather).

The flowers for the wedding are a combination of pinks and purples, so we embraced that as the theme for the shower… check out our spread:

shower13

We served BBQ Meatballs, Chips & Guacamole, stuffed peppers, a cream cheese dip, caprese skewers, veggie cups, and fruit skewers on the food table. For decor we used burlap squares, tissue balls and tulips.

But the real food winner for the day was the dessert table:

The cheesecakes are a family favorite, my dad and I tag teamed them this time, but they are really my dad’s specialty and Arthur’s absolute favorite. But my favorite were those cookies… my co-host Emily made those and they are for real the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had. I may or may not have eaten one for breakfast on Sunday. And by that I mean… I had two.

Speaking of my co-host, her daughter and I unexpectedly coordinated outfits, so I had an unexpected (second) twin for the day! How cute is she?!!?

Sharon (whose home we were in) is a whiz at flowers… and she had BEAUTIFUL tulips to decorate the tables and despite being early in the season she made her backyard shine with fabulous flowers

For our entertainment I had the happy couple and both sets of their parents play The Newlywed Game. It ended up being a quick, hilarious game. I just asked 5 questions, this picture is from the last question: Who does/will do more chores?

Their answer? The other one. That should be fun to figure out who is right! It was such a fun game to play!! I love Becky’s family so much, and they have loved Arthur and welcomed him into their family with open arms. I couldn’t have asked for a better set of in-laws for him!! PS… they won the Newlywed Game, aren’t they cute celebrating?!

The circle garland on the mantle was a quick craft I made for the shower and I was A-MAZED at how easy it was… I will definitely be making more of these… and just for you, I’ll post a tutorial on that later this week! Update–tutorial posted!

And we just sprinkled a few white frames around the house for more decor:

And for favors I had a friend of mine bake up and decorate some fabulous sugar cookies and set them next to a framed copy of the invitation:

In case you want a closer look at the invite (altered for privacy of course) I whipped up in photoshop and had printed at mpix.com (love that site), here it is:

I’ll have a post on that coming this week too with font names, etc.

Overall it was a FANTASTIC shower for two fantastic people. I think this picture sums up how wonderful and full their lives are:

I am so blessed to have them in my life and can’t wait to celebrate everything with them this weekend!!

Filed Under: Party, Showers

Happy Teal Flower Towers

February 20, 2014 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

The sun is shining, the weather is turning beautiful and giving us hope that spring may eventually, actually be sprung. I am not a cold weather fan (umm… duh, I live in Texas) and this winter has drug on and on and on. Is anyone else ready for winter to finally be gone and to welcome springtime, flowers, warm weather?!? I am for sure.

Which probably explains why I did something a bit out of character. I’m not usually one for bold color or lots of patterns, but spray painting my flower shelves that sit outside my kitchen table had me picking a table I would never otherwise have chosen. Turquoise. Or technically “Lagoon”. I’ve you’ve been around the blog a while you may remember that I didn’t have much luck with my flower containers last year (I blame the intense heat):

But these pictures do give a pretty good glimpse of what the flower towers looked like before. And just so you can see what they looked like with living flowers in them:

Well I got in the mood to spray paint something the other day, and while its not quite time to plant my spring containers, I did decide to do a little “garden prep”, aka I spray painted these puppies with Rustoleums Lagoon color in Satin. But it being dark outside so early I was racing against the clock, so I didn’t get any ‘in progress shots’ sorry… bad blogger.

PS… if you have to spray paint anything, invest the 5$ for one of the handle things. It makes it WAAAAAAY easier to get nice even coats and your hand won’t look like The Claw afterwards. (Friends reference anyone?)

I love these flower shelves, they came from my grandmother’s basement and were the perfect addition to this side patio, but since they were a few years old, their brown color was looking a little tired and worse for the wear, so they had been on my list of things to paint for a while! I think one of the reasons I love these so much is that they reminds me of the wardrobe character in Beauty and the Beast